1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to de-lamination of two pieces of media which have been laminated together such as by the use of heat and/or pressure, and more particularly to the use of a de-lamination leader to enable the easy breakage of the bond between the two pieces of laminated media so that the remaining portions of the pieces can be peeled apart.
2. Background Art
Proofing is the procedure used by the printing industry for creating representative images that replicate the appearance of printed images without the cost and time required to actually set up a high-speed, high-volume printing press to print an example of the images intended. Ideally, these representative images, or proofs, are generated, if in color, from the same color-separations used to produce the individual color printing plates used in printing presses so that variations in the resulting images can be minimized. Various proofing systems have been devised to create the proofs and have included the use of smaller, slower presses as well as means other than presses, such as photographic, electrophotographic, light imaging and non-photographic processes. The present invention is particularly useful in the field of proofing output devices.
KODAK Color Proofing Products provide a wide range of color proofing systems and materials to the graphics imaging industry. The KODAK Color Proofing Laminator is an important part of the color proofing systems for bonding lamination sheets to receiver stock. The lamination sheets include a carrier and a layer of material to be applied to the receiver stock, which, in the case of Kodak Color Proofing Products, is a color donor. A lamination sheet is laid upon the receiver stock with the color donor side sandwiched between the carrier and the receiver stock.
As shown in FIG. 1, the leading edge of the lamination sheet and receiver stock sandwich 10 is fed into a laminator 12, and the sandwich passes completely through a set of heated rollers, not shown. The laminated sandwich sits on an exit table 14 undisturbed until the trailing edge is cool to the touch, whereupon the top-most carrier 16 can be peeled away from receiver stock 18 and from the transferred color donor 20 as shown in FIG. 2. The carrier is then discarded. After de-lamination, the color proof is ready for any subsequent processing that may be required for the type of proof being made. For example, additional colors may be added by applying additional layers of color donor over the first, and repeating the cycle. Further details of this type of lamination/de-lamination system can be found in commonly-assigned, U.S. Pat. No. 5,203,942, which issued to B. DeCook et al. on Apr. 20, 1993.
Peeling the carrier of this particular media before it is cool risks color donor "pick-off" from the receiver stock. While the above-described KODAK Color Proofing Laminator works well for many intended materials, there are other materials that require peeling the carrier from the receiver stock while the sandwich is hot. An operator would be required to quickly grasp the hot sandwich as it emerges from the roller, manually break the seal between the leading edge of the carrier and the receiver stock (such as with a thumb nail), and peel the carrier as the sandwich progresses from the rollers.